Trees or shrubs. Leaves alternate, usually simple, petiolate; leaf blade margin entire or sometimes crenate. Flowers bisexual, axillary, solitary or sometimes forming racemes or corymbs. Calyx cup-shaped or campanulate, short, 4- or 5-lobed. Petals 4 or 5, distinct, linear to spatulate, much longer than sepals, imbricate or contorted in bud. Staminal tube cylindric, long, thin, apex inflated and lobed; anthers 8-10(-20), inserted between lobes, included or ± exserted. Disk annular or absent. Ovary subglobose to elliptic, small, glabrous, 4-locular or more, with 2 anatropous ovules per locule; style filiform, exserted from tube; stigma disciform, capitate, or ampuliform. Fruit a loculicidal capsule, 4-locular or more, with 1 or 2 seeds per locule; pericarp leathery or woody. Seeds oblong to ellipsoid, ± curved, smooth, with one broad and compound hilum; endosperm fleshy; cotyledons leaflike; radicle cylindric.

About 60 species: tropical Africa, Asia, Australia, and Madagascar; one species in China.

(Authors: Peng Hua (彭华); David J. Mabberley)